Aristotle says tragedy must obtain 6 elements and the play must have unity of time, place and action. Those elements are plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song. The character in the elements should be a superhuman, above the average person. He has to have a tragic flaw and have both virtue and vice - be both virtuous and villainous. The unity in a tragedy is based on: Time- the action of the play should occur within the span of a day, Place - the action of the play should occur in one location and Action - All action should move towards the same conclusion. The spectacle includes the staging and properties used during the play. Spectacle includes either the reporting of or actual presence of violence and the use of any props. The tragedy plays that I have read are Oedipus Rex which is a classical tragedy, Julius Caesar which is a renaissance tragedy and All My Sons which is a modern tragedy.

Bust of Gaius Julius Caesar in the National Archae...

Bust of Julius Caesar from the British Museum

Photo of the first page of Julius Caesar from a fa...

The character of the play is a superhuman, above average person. He posses both virtue and vice which is he is both virtuous and villainous. He also has a tragic flaw that's usually an internal quality that leads the hero to his downfall. The flaw is recognized to have come by him and that is where he falls. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus believes he can outwit fate and over come his prophecy. He is proven to be very smart and is a great ruler but he gets mad easily and jumps to conclusions with out thinking first. The time of realization of the flaw is when the shepherd explains to him that he led himself to fulfill the prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother. Oedipus blinds himself and lives life afterwards as...

More European Literature essays:

... tragedy and tragic heroes is derived from the writings of the Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle in his famous "poetics". Although Aristotle considered Sophocles' Oedipus to be the ideal tragic hero, Shakespeare's Hamlet, written many centuries later, has many of the same elements. Aristotle ...

... tragedies follow Aristotle's ideas about tragedy, where you have a tragic hero. Tragic heroes, in short, are privileged and socially elevated characters and they are characterized by two very important qualities: a fatal flaw and a personality ...

... king's death. One of the main reasons that Hamlet is a tragedy is because Hamlet is a tragic hero, misunderstood in his own time and place, who had the right intentions but the wrong ways. Hamlet's "tragic flaw ...

... tragic flaws (hamartia) - naivety and trust in the wrong people. An Aristotelian reading of Othello is mainly concerned with the element of a "tragic flaw" in the protagonist, and the "complex" plot whereby a "recognition" and ...

... and Julius Caesar. But it is also considered a tragedy. The importance of history in the play cannot be denied, especially where it is compared to Shakespeare's 'great' tragedies such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. But one might wonder what is specifically tragic in Antony and Cleopatra , and ...

14 pages50Jan/20065.0

Students & Profs. say about us:

"Good news: you can turn to other's writing help. WriteWork has over 100,000 sample papers"